


Scarred

by Pardra



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ambiguous Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Angst, Gen, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, I guess there's a pairing if you squint, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Only a little comfort, characters from all Houses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:54:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25661680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pardra/pseuds/Pardra
Summary: Byleth can turn back time, can stave off death, but he cannot erase the scars it leaves on his eyes.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Scarred

**Author's Note:**

> AN: This is just a bunch of scenes in the same vein. Sort of ambiguous route.
> 
> I can’t stop writing horrible angsty things. Maybe one day I’ll write something genuinely nice. Inspired somewhat by the concept of Raistlin Majere from the Dragonlance Chronicles. If you know, you know.

Byleth was proud of his students’ performance that day in their extermination of the bandits. It was one of their first real missions after the mock battle. Jeralt, who had accompanied them, was unwinding in the homeroom. The man stood across from him, eyeing the students, still damp with sweat, spotted with blood. None of it was his save for a sliver on the side of his neck, a tiny rivulet of blood oozing down into his collar.

“I’m glad you stepped in there when you did, though, or I might be having to explain to Maneula how I got one of her students killed.”

Caspar, who was not a particularly important noble in the grand scheme of things; Byleth was glad, too, that he had rewound time to prevent him from dying to an archer. He was already growing fond of the students here, despite how odd they could be. Jeralt snorted and glanced at a mercenary passing by the door, and he frowned. The cut extended back further than he had thought.

“Your wound,” he said, bothered enough at last to reach out and touch the scarlet crescent. His fingertips touched smooth, flawless skin, unmarred by anything but sweat and dirt.

Byleth stared as Jeralt went behind him and rubbed at his throat. Muttering about how he had been healed already.

In his head, Sothis sighed. _“If you want his attention, you need only ask for it. He is your father, after all.”_

She hadn’t seen it?

“Forgive me. There’s nothing there, I must be tired.”

Jeralt gave him an odd look, but let himself be pacified by that answer. He didn’t begrudge it when his father reached out to ruffle his hair.

“Go get some food, then, and go to bed. Can’t have you running around the church seeing things.”

Byleth nodded and obediently went to return to his room for a quick break. Ignoring Sothis’ suspicion. A boisterous cry drew his attention to Caspar and Linhardt arguing under an archway. Byleth felt dread grip him as he altered his course toward them.

Caspar was sporting an arrow in his jacket, like a macabre pin over his breast. It was so deeply embedded that it peeked through his vest on the other side. The fabric was undamaged, and the arrow passed through his hands like a sunbeam. Sothis was puzzled by his thoughts, and Caspar and Linhardt regarded him in concern.

“Didn’t know you loved mead as much as the Captain, Professor!” Caspar chirped, when Byleth had the grace to show some sign of embarrassment by dipping his head.

“Tired,” he offered as a weak excuse.

+++

One night, an older mercenary, a woman who had known him since childhood, sat next to him. Her blood dribbled into her stew as she ate, thick gobs of clotted dark blood and tissue landing among beef, potatoes, and carrots. _Byleth._ She lifted her spoon to her mouth with part of her tongue nestled there. _Byleth._

He lifted his head, to clear his mind from the illusion. She was alive and here and speaking, and the others acknowledged her. She was not dead. Across the tables, one of the knights brining his dinner over had a missing arm, the stump fresh and bloody. His tray was suspended steadily with only his right hand, on the right side. It did not dip despite the heavy earthenware bowl on it. Byleth quickly looked back at his dinner companions. His father was staring at him. Dorothea had her head craned around Hilda. _Byleth. You are ignoring me._

He should not have looked. The unholy concoction fell back through the gash in her neck where she had been gutted from chin to breastbone. _Byleth_. Burning bile rose in his throat, his mouth watered. He did not remember leaving his seat but did remember stumbling, catching himself. _Byleth!_

He did not make it back to his room before he was ill, but had the decency to find a bush to sick in. Sothis’ hands were around his face. Cold on his fevered flesh, wispy as cobwebs. She crooned his name as she delved through his memories, he had not the presence of mind to stop her, still shuddering with revulsion.

He had seen death, was no stranger to it. Was not as bothered as he should be. The dead did not, should not, masquerade as the living.

_What you see is not for mortal eyes. I will see what I can do. I’m sorry. Oh, Byleth._

+++

She weaved illusions over his vision, of each person they meet, so that he can find some peace. Byleth blinked a stream of tears from his eyes, and everything was suddenly beautiful again.

He still does not eat in the dining hall, and he still does not eat stew.

+++

Claude found him some time after his outburst and teased him about his new eating habits. “You too good to eat with us now, Teach?”

He shook his head, intoxicated by the _wholeness_ of him that he felt he could devour the sight of him, of all of them, and live on that alone. He managed a tight smile. Byleth still felt uneasy after the incident, more sensitive to the sight of blood.

“No. I am just not able to eat there anymore.”

Claude reclined in his chair, behind his desk, as if he was the professor. “Again… That doesn’t really make me feel better.”

“Perhaps I am not concerned with whether or not if makes you feel better.”

_Hah!_ Sothis crowed, approving of his bite.

Claude held his hand to his chest, as if wounded, and Byleth remembered the way Ignatz had looked after a Divine Pulse had brought him back from a Thoron. Black flesh, trailing off into little pale jagged lines, like cracks in ice. That one had been almost pretty.

“You wound me.”

“I am embarrassed.”

The Head of the Golden Deer lifted his head, eyes sparkling. He was so alive. He thanked Sothis over and over in his head until she clapped her hands in annoyance. But he really was grateful. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could have tolerated seeing _that_ everywhere.

“Oh, because you got sick? Teach, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re not the first—”

“I simply cannot eat most meat anymore at the moment and have been preparing my own food.”

Byleth grabbed his papers and resigned himself to finishing in his room, leaving Claude startled like his House’s namesake.

_What an awkward duckling you are, Byleth._

+++

Byleth is Sothis, and Sothis is Byleth. He is now no longer sure what he is, if he still counts as mortal, as human. The dead persist, and there is no Sothis to shield him.

The dead return, and they are numerous.

+++

He wanted only to sleep away the strain of using multiple Divine Pulses and wielding the Sword of the Creator. But the evening was relatively young, and he had not closed the flaps of his tent yet, so he was not unsurprised when someone walked in. He turned his head to greet them and stared dumbly instead.

The person was a walking corpse, as were most of his companions these days. Charred red and black roots twisting into a mockery of a human being. A single eye starred at him, white and bulging. Byleth tasted metal on his tongue. Its mouth opened and closed, the rasp of its dry flesh like insect wings and dead leaves, the teeth hideously white. It was mesmerizing. He had seen burned bodies, but not one that walked up to him and demanded his attention, and speak it did.

“Professor Eisner?”

Byleth shook himself of his thoughts, but the terrible specter remained. “Tell your lord I will be there shortly.”

He knew he had said the wrong thing because it paused, its fingers tapped one another, flakes of blackened skin drifting to the floor of his tent. He had not been hungry anyway.

“Professor? Are you, are you feeling okay? Did I do something wrong? Are you disappointed in me? Oh please don’t be mad at me, I--”

The smell of burned hair and flesh made his stomach roil.

“I’m only tired.”

Its frantic fidgeting subsided. He could see a few strands of hair and a pin that had become a part of her, a mangled mass of metal and flesh and hair. Her sightless eyes stared at him, and for one hysterical moment he envied her.

“Oh. T—take care of yourself, Professor!”

And then she was gone.

“You, too, Bernadetta.”

+++

His fingers carded through Flayn’s hair, tender and slow. It was streaked in crimson, but it felt dry between his fingers as he picked out another knot. Flayn hummed and Byleth groomed. It was almost peaceful as long as he couldn’t see her face.

He could still hear Seteth’s inhuman screams of rage and pain. The phantom of that was almost worse than the ruined cavern of her chest.

+++

The dead paraded around him, laughing, calling to him, reaching out to grasp the hem of his coat. They stopped him in the hallways, they asked for advice, help. He stared at them, trying to remember them by voice alone. Some were so in ruin that their identities had been erased from him. Every day, every battle, the living dead increased in number.

He sought solace in the ruined sanctuary, but found it occupied by someone else’s ghosts. Dimitri did not hear him as he approached, silent and curious, and hid himself half behind the column nearest him.

“Father, I promise… Not a one will survive. Everyone who wrong you, I will slaughter them all.”

Byleth exhaled, unsure if he had the emotional fortitude to deal with Dimitri as he was. The man turned his single, baleful eye on Byleth.

“Come out, and stop hiding in the shadows like vermin,” the king snarled, drawing himself up.

As he rounded the column, some of the tension eased, but he also looked a little… disappointed. It was almost funny. “Do I displease you? Do you wish that I was someone you could kill?”

“Make no mistake, Professor, I can and will kill you if you do not cease your skulking.”

Adorable. Byleth was the closest thing Fodlan had to a god and Dimitri a petulant king. He reached out and gripped Dimitri’s forearm to prove to them both that nothing would happen. The man looked down at him sharply, teeth bared. There was a trail of blood oozing out from under his eyepatch, but he was otherwise beautifully whole.

“Do they bother you always?” He whispered, as if they were not alone in a place where no one worshipped anymore.

“Always,” he rumbled, staring past Byleth, his features rendered cold and white in the moonlight. The king shook his head, like a distressed bear. “You have no idea what it’s like to have them always screaming and clawing, _never satisfied._ ”

Byleth laughed, warm, and fond and reached up to wipe away blood that only he could see. “I understand better than you think. Sometimes I wish I could not see them at all.”

Dimitri looked down at him in startled confusion, as if he did not know who Byleth was. He was getting used to that reaction.

+++

Wherever he rode, death followed loyally at his heels, sprouted from his hand. Every Divine Pulse transformed familiar forms into even ghastlier beings. Blood soaked fabric and weapon dented armor until it became difficult to distinguish friend from foe. Did it matter, when they were all the dead? The dead should stay dead. They were everywhere, the revulsion and stench of them a constant companion.

He had no more desire to hear their words or fight their battles, no matter how they begged and pleaded. He laughed at their offerings of bloodstained finery and rotten food. He ought to slaughter them for their insults, but they were dead already, then, weren’t they?

He wished he could not see them.

+++

Lysithea passed him by one day, in his wanderings. She looked perfect. He could smell new death on her, but he could not remember what battle she had fought where she had even been struck. The girl is wan and pale, and without any color. She looked whole, and yet--

Byleth left her feeling cold. He dragged his hand down his face, nails sliding through his eyebrows and over his eyelids. He lifted his hand again, fingers clawed. It would be better if he _could not see them._

“Professor?” Her voice halted him. She was staring at him, her body language anxious, like a frightened child. She laughed nervously when he looked at her. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

+++

His behavior was becoming abnormal enough to garner the attention of the dead. Seteth, mercifully recognizable from the masses by his green hair and circlet, took him aside from where he had been standing, lost in thought, and exacted a confession from him. It was not difficult. Byleth’s tongue was loose with apathy. There was always a Divine Pulse.

Seteth took him by the elbows, green eyes wide. Byleth could see into the aperture between them, but struggled to pay attention. “Foolish child! You needn’t have suffered needlessly. Mother’s glamours are but a simple spell. _Oh, Byleth.”_

Byleth stared up at the man, who sounded so like his mother, uncomprehendingly and then felt _something_ touch his eyes, alarming and discomforting. His vision blurred and he blinked away a sudden stream of tears. The man before him was beautifully unbloodied, _whole_. Mercifully, his vision had been restored.

He fell into Cichol’s arms and let himself be soothed like a child waking from a nightmare. A rough hand smoothed out his hair with practiced strokes.

_Oh, Byleth_


End file.
